You may have noticed that deliberation often emerges when people are doing things together. Spending time in a car driving to a meeting out of town, participating in a working bee or stuffing envelopes. In a recent workshop, Jade Herriman and I got people cutting and pasting, and making a book. They were putting their minds to what’s important to them about Glenbrook Lagoon in the lower Blue Mountains. At the same time they were hearing from Council some of the issues they face in their decision-making around managing a tricky situation involving weeds, nutrients and people’s feelings about the lagoon.
Here’s more about the workshop and the project. We used strategic questions to raise issues as people selected their materials and worked on their books, and learned a lot about this low-key way of hearing about how people understand a complex environmental problem in their neighbourhood.